HIGH SCHOOL BASEBALL: La Mirada bounces back

LAKEWOOD - La Mirada High on Tuesday suffered one of those defeats that is difficult to swallow. The Matadores led Mayfair by a run going into the seventh inning, but the Monsoons came up with two runs to win an important Suburban League baseball game.

Fast forward to Thursday at Mayfair. Same two teams, same thing - the league championship - on the line. This time La Mirada came up big in every way - on the mound, with the bat and in the field - and took a 3-0 victory in just one hour and 28 minutes.

The win earned La Mirada (19-10-1, 10-2) a co-championship with Mayfair (20-8, 10-2) in the regular-season finale. The Matadores also will get the league's No. 1 seed when CIF-SS divisional playoff pairings are announced Monday. The teams split two games, with the next tiebreaker being run differential. Mayfair won by one run on Tuesday, but La Mirada won by three Thursday.

The two biggest heroes for the Matadores were junior pitcher Blake Wilson and sophomore third baseman Ethan Lopez. Wilson pitched a complete-game 1-hitter and struck out five, including Omar Moncayo looking to end the game with runners on second and third.

Lopez gave Wilson the only run he needed when he homered over the center-field fence, just left of the 370-foot sign, off Michael Agramonte in the sixth inning.

Longtime La Mirada head coach Kim Brooks was thrilled his team rebounded from Tuesday's heartbreaking setback to play near-flawless ball two days later.

"They're good kids, they're competitive, they work hard," Brooks said. "As a coach, you have a philosophy. I'm aggressive, I want to attack and they understand this is how we play baseball.

"And so, am I surprised we did this? No, those kids are capable of doing that."

Brooks also said Wilson (6-0) is capable of pitching this way every time. He had an off outing in his last start, so Brooks had a talk with him at practice Wednesday.

"I told him, `I want you to take the mound with an attitude,"' Brooks said. "His attitude was, `Hit this.' That's an attitude a pitcher has to have."

Wilson had a curveball, change-up and fastball that worked well.

"Just getting ahead and being able to throw more than one pitch for strikes," Wilson said of the keys.

The only innings Wilson did not retire the side in order were the second and seventh. His defense did not make an error.

Lopez made himself known in the top of the sixth. Agramonte (6-3) also was pitching well but put a pitch where Lopez crushed it.

"He was coming in on me the whole game," Lopez said, "and I was getting jammed. So I figured back off the plate, think right side and I got my pitch."

Did he know it was gone?

"Off the bat," he said.

The Matadores added two insurance runs in the top of the seventh, the last one on a safety squeeze laid down by Justin Knight.